How We Perform

Consultations

As a statutory consultee, we receive consultations from local planning authorities and respond to them with our advice. We also respond to Scheduled Monument Consents, which are decided by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

This section contains our latest reports to the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. These report on our timeliness of responses to planning, listed building and referral consultations and Scheduled Monument Consents.

Historic England and Business Impact Target (BIT)

The Government is keen that regulatory regimes should always be operated in as business-friendly a way as possible. Historic England is classed as a regulator because we have a small number of regulatory powers, though we mostly act in an advisory capacity in recommending the listing of sites and buildings, in giving advice to owners and local planning authorities and so forth.

The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (SBEE Act 2015) requires the Government to publish a target (Business Impact Target - BIT) regarding the economic impact on business activities of "qualifying regulatory provisions" (QRPs) that come into force, cease to be in force, or change during the Parliamentary term. The Enterprise Act 2016 brings the activities of statutory regulators into scope of the target (non-statutory regulators were already in scope).

Historic England must therefore agree Qualifying Regulatory Provisions and Non-Qualifying Regulatory Provisions for the 2017-22 Parliament with the Regulatory Policy Committee, the independent verification body for the Business Impact Target.

To understand the scope of the BIT, it is necessary to understand what constitutes a "regulatory provision". The SBEE Act 2015 broadly defines regulatory provisions as those concerning the regulation of the activities of business and community and voluntary bodies (section 22 of the SBEE Act). Regulatory provisions include any changes to regulation through (a) primary or secondary legislation (b) regulatory activity by non-statutory regulators (c) regulatory activity by 'relevant' statutory regulators (section 22(b) of the SBEE Act 2015).

Historic England has now received confirmation from the Regulatory Policy Committee of our Non-Qualifying Regulatory Provision Assurance Statement for the reporting year 2015-17. Our list of Qualifying and Non-Qualifying Regulatory Provisions is published below.